The Good Life Campaign: My 10 Top Tips For A Happy New Year (And Beyond)

‘The secret to happiness is flowing not forcing.’

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The beginning of a new year is traditionally the time for resolutions and resolves to change our life. Although I have always been a bit skeptical about New Year’s resolutions (as it seems that most of them are broken within the first couple of months), the beginning of this year simultaneously marks the end of this blog, and therefore, this seems to be a good time for a little recap.

So below is a list of my Top Tips for increasing the level of subjective well-being and fulfillment in our future life. As regular blog readers will know, there is little point in waiting for our life to become perfect- because there is just no perfection in the real word, at least not in the long run. Therefore, it is a question of an ongoing process of adjusting certain habits, behaviours and mindsets.

The tips represent the points that I find personally most important, but the list is of course by no means exhaustive (otherwise it would not have taken me almost a whole year to go through all topics associated with well-being individually). All points are based on previous posts, which you can access by clicking on the enclosed links.

My Top Ten Tips for well-being

Do not try to seek eternal happiness- happiness cannot be directly pursued. It arises indirectly when you live well. The points below are a good guide for this.
Get the basics right: Get enough sleep. Exercise and eat well. Spend time in nature. This is not optional. All these things have been proven to support healthy brain function, which is absolutely essential in order to feel well. See also the post Don't Forget The Basics, Self-Control, Food For Thought & The Great Outdoors.
Build and deepen positive connections to other people. Right after the basic physical needs, this is the most important factor for our well-being. Spend time together and talk. Be kind to others and let others help you. Look for people who are supportive and allow you to grow. See also the posts about Improving Relationships With Others , Me, We, Them- What Drives Our Decision Making and Empathy and Compassion. Regarding the difficult people: See them as a challenge (not a threat), but don’t spend more time with them than necessary. For more information go to: Understanding Interpersonal Difficulties, No Need To Shout 1 & No Need To Shout 2.
Be kind to yourself. Self-Compassion is a strength and has nothing to do with self-pity!
Be clear about your values, priorities and goals- they give your life meaning. If you are unsure about your values, completing the signature strengths test may help you to get a clearer idea. See also the post About Finding Meaning.
Change what you can change, but when you cannot change something then let it go and forgive. I have found this point really helpful. It is easy to waste a lot of time and energy lamenting things on which we have no influence, and it is a lot wiser to focus this energy on something positive and productive. Working Out What To Do, Forgiveness & Acceptance can give some further ideas.
Be grateful for what you have, even the little things. Practicing gratitude (rather than regretting what we don't have) is one of the fastest ways to increase our subjective well-being. See also the post on Gratitude.
Stay optimistic and hopeful (but not too much!). To learn more about finding the right balance, see Hope and Optimism.
Learn to deal with difficult situations, your weaknesses, mistakes, failures and errors. Long-term happiness and well-being are only possible if learn to cope with adversity and are able to look at ourselves, others and the world openly and honestly ‘warts and all’: Courage, Dealing With The Darker Days, Perfectionism, Self-Compassion and About Resilience 2.
Live mindfully and meditate- there is plenty of scientific evidence showing that mindfulness and meditation practices have a large variety of beneficial effects, and if you would like to focus on just one activity to improve your life, then this is a good starting point. See the previous post on Mindfulness. Some further updates on meditation and mindfulness can be found below.

If you like, you can use above tips as a guideline for any changes you may want to make to your life in the coming year. However, remember that most (New Year’s) resolutions fail, because we want to achieve too much too quickly. Instead, the secret of success often lies in making little and incremental, but consistent changes towards a goal. With some patience and persistence, we can then achieve a slow but lasting transformation.

This is particularly true as we cannot achieve happiness by directly striving for it, as suggested by the quote above in the introduction: When we try too hard, we will not get there.

Mindfulness revisited

From all topics discussed on the blog, I have personally found the topic of mindfulness and meditation most fascinating and revealing. Although I had thought that I was aware of the benefits of mindfulness practices for quite some time, it turns out that I had in fact only just scratched the surface. However, the excellent books Full Catastrophe Living: How To Cope With Stress, Pain and Illness Using Mindfulness Meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn and The Science of Meditation: How to Change Your Brain, Mind and Body by Daniel Goleman and Richard J Davidson have given me a deeper understanding of the potential of these techniques, and I thought that you may be interested in an update on this topic.

One of the difficulties with mindfulness and meditation is that they are difficult to describe to other people, who have not come across them before. So here is another try:

At the most basic level, mindfulness may be described as a way of living, where we pay attention to present moment experiences (including mental/emotional experiences and body sensations) with a compassionate, open and accepting attitude.¹ Mindfulness can be learnt through different mindfulness exercises and meditations (see below). However, mindfulness does not necessarily require these practices, as it is also possible to be mindful in our daily lives by staying in the moment and actively observing our moment-to-moment experiences. There are different variations of mindfulness. Probably the best researched mindfulness-based intervention is Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), which has been developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn a few decades ago. MBSR consists of a combination of different meditations and exercises which are taught over a period of 8 weeks, after which time participants are encouraged to continue with regular meditation.²

Meditation can be most broadly thought of as a form of mental training, just as sport can be described as physical training.³ However, as you all know, there are many different types of sport. And similarly, although the most commonly practiced meditations have their roots in Yoga and Buddhist spiritual traditions, there are many different types of meditations (e.g. breathing meditations, observation of thoughts and emotions, transcendental meditation). Furthermore, as with physical exercise, these meditations can be practiced to different levels from the ad hoc, intermittent exerciser over the more serious ‘leisure’ sportsman to Olympic level so to speak.

In terms of the duration of effects of meditation, it is possible to differentiate between transient effects which only occur temporarily during the meditation practice itself (state effect), whereas it is also possible to induce lasting changes, which change how we behave and think in our daily life even outside the times of meditation (trait effect).³ The trait effect is made possible by neuroplasticity, a phenomenon that we have previously discussed on the blog. Neuroplasticity means that our experiences physically change the connections of nerve cells in our brains. This may not have measurable effects with a single, non-traumatic experience but with focused and repeated mental practice (such as meditation), we can re-shape our brain in a way, which causes noticeable and lasting changes.

Now, the interesting thing is that the specific type of effect that we can expect from meditation practice and the strength and duration of the effect (state vs trait effect) very much depend on the type of meditation that we practice and on the time that we put into the practice.³

For example, meditations with an emphasis on focusing attention on breathing and/or body sensations decrease mind-wandering, whereas observation of thought meditations increase our meta-awareness (meaning that we consciously think about thoughts and emotions, which makes us feel less entangled in them), while loving kindness meditations (where we evoke warm feelings of compassion for ourselves and others) increase positive emotions.³ Furthermore, during the meditation itself, breathing meditation tends to have a relaxing effect (decreasing the heart rate) whereas observing thoughts and loving-kindness meditations are not necessarily relaxing and may even increase the heart rate.

As a general rule, trait effects are generally only observed in regular meditators.^2,3 Although brief exercises (e.g. on mobile phone Apps) may have a temporary relaxing effect, they are unlikely to lead to longer lasting changes.

However, is we are prepared to put in more practice, there are many further potential benefits, which may include (depending on the chosen practices): An overall increased subjective well-being; improved emotion regulation and increased mental and physical resilience; better interpersonal relationships; improved concentration, memory and reaction times; a reduction in anxiety, depression, hypertension and stress; reduction in chronic pain.^2,3 Regular (daily) meditation practice can therefore help us to find inner balance and wisdom, which can help us in daily life.

Despite these potentially immense benefits, it has to be stressed that meditation is not for everybody. Some people simply do not get on with it. More seriously, occasional adverse effects have been reported (also called ‘Dark Night Phenomenon’) although meditation (including mindfulness programs) is generally considered to be a safe form of mental training. These are rare, but can be serious ranging from severe panic attacks to the feeling of depersonalization and psychotic states. Harmful effects are more likely to occur in meditators with pre-existing mental health issues and in participants of intensive training retreats lasting several days. It is therefore advised that people with a history of mental illness should practice meditation only after assessment by an experienced instructor and not during an acute episode of illness.⁴

To return to the analogy of sport, it takes some training to become fit, and if we have not exercised for a very long time or have some sort of ailment then it may be better to do the training under qualified instruction in order to avoid injury. However, whereas we often have a very goal-orientated approach with physical exercise, mindfulness and meditation practices call for a non-striving attitude in order to become better at them. Again, this is very similar to the paradoxical effect that direct striving for happiness will actually slow us down in achieving just this. With mindfulness this makes a lot of sense, as the essence of a mindful life is to be present in the moment, with an open and accepting attitude towards new experiences (being mode) rather than trying to strive and control (doing mode).

When taking up mindfulness and/or meditation training, it is therefore advisable to do this with an open mind and not in order to achieve any specific benefit that I have listed above. This is also captured in a Buddhist joke:

A Zen student went to a temple and asked how long it would take him to gain enlightenment if he joined the temple.

"Ten years," said the Zen master.

"Well, how about if I really work hard and double my effort?"

"Twenty years."

If you are interested in a mindful start in the New Year and setting long-term intentions, you may also be interested in this article, which was sent in by a good friend and blog follower: https://jackkornfield.com/dedication-and-long-term-intention/. Jack Kornfield's website also contains many other interesting articles on the topic of meditation.

You could also sign up to a mindfulness course. If you live in the UK then you find an appropriately qualified and accredited teacher near you via this website: https://www.mindfulnessteachersuk.org.uk/uk-listing/

Preview: Next week we have reached the end of the Good Life Campaign blog, but you can look forward to a downloadable PDF ‘eBook’.

References and further evidence-based reading:

1. Williams M, Penman D. Mindfulness: A Practical Guide To Finding Peace In A Frantic World. Hachette Digital Little, Brown Book Group; London, UK. 2011.

2. Kabat-Zinn J: Full Catastrophe Living: How To Cope With Stress, Pain and Illness Using Mindfulness Meditation. Piatkus. 2013.

3. Goleman D, Davidson RJ. The Science of Meditation: How to Change Your Brain, Mind and Body. Penguin Random House UK, 2017.

4. Baer R, Kuyken W. Is mindfulness safe? 2016. Retrieved from http://oxfordmindfulness.org/insight/is-mindfulness-safe/

If you found this information helpful, please consider supporting the campaign under Just Giving. Of course it is also great if you choose to support another charity or do a practical good deed, but it would be nice if you could let me know that you have done this because you felt inspired by this campaign. Please also feel free to share this post and let me know if you have any constructive feedback- good or bad!

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